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Genuine. Truly what something is said to be. Authentic.
There isn’t a whole lot of authenticity going around these days. Genuine isn’t the first word I think of – unfortunately – when I think of our culture today. And, tragically, genuine and authentic certainly aren’t the first words I think of to describe the church, either.
But we see of the early believers at Thessalonica a strong desire for genuineness.
“but we were gentle among you, like a mother caring for her little children. We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.”
– 1 Thessalonians 2: 7-8
There was love for one-another – care and concern. There was a desire to see one-another grow up in the Lord.
There was affection – as though a mother cares for her child, so did the believers desire those around them to know the Lord, and mature in Him.
May we as the church have a love for those with whom we fellowship.
May we be dedicated to one-another, striving together to grow, mature, and become all the more conformed to His image.
May we exist in authentic, transparent community.
May our love always be evident – our love for our Lord and our love for each other.
I often wonder if I have a burden for this world – if I love those around me to share with them the freedom of Jesus Christ.
Do I recognize their need for fulfillment in the only One who can fulfill? Am I sensitive to their need for purpose, a purpose only He can give? Can I overcome my personality – my desire to stick to my own business and not bother with other people – to be authentic with them and share the Light of my life with them?
The believers at Thessalonica had no problem in doing this, none whatsoever.
In verse 2 we see that God was present with them, He gave them help and boldness and courage.
His Spirit was there, in their midst and in their hearts in a very real way. He empowered them and strengthened them.
I also often wonder – when I do share the Gospel, why I do.
Do I want public acclaim?
“I have led three people to Christ in the past year.”
Do I want public recognition?
“Look how big our church is.”
Do I want public approval?
“I must be a good preacher, look at how many people raised their hand after my sermon.”
God purified the desires of the believers at Thessalonica; there were no ulterior motives or secondary purposes. God selected them, instilled them with a burden for their lost and dying world, empowered them, and was confident they could share His truth with their community.
The Thessalonian believers had no ulterior motives, they simply wanted those around them to know the Lord and love Him. They had no fancy methods, simply His Spirit and His truth.
What are my motives in forming relationships? Do I desire fellowship? Do I love non-believers enough to share God’s Word with them, that they may know Him?
How bold am I? How daring? Who do I try and please? What am I afraid of? Who do I fear?
My the sovereign God, who inspires us with life and truth, have free reign over our souls, to transform us daily for His purposes. May we have no agenda but His kingdom, and no purposes but to worship Him.
I ran track all throughout college, and the first week of practice was always the hardest.
Sure, we had been running and lifting all off-season, but there was nothing that could match that first week; nothing could replicate the intensity, the fervor, and the harshness of that first week. Our coach was always there, guiding us and putting our hard work in perspective, reminding us to persevere. He was especially cognizant of the freshman, who had a tendency not to understand what we were doing or why, and was always careful to encourage them.
That is essentially what I Thessalonians is, a letter of encouragement and joy from the apostle Paul to a group of believers who were new in their faith; challenging these new believers to remain strong in their faith and persevere through persecution and opposition.
Paul makes it very clear in verse 1 that the church at Thessalonica is a true church, an ekklesia; “those who are called out, those who are called for a special purpose.”
In verse 2, Paul thanks God for the believers’ dedication and persistence, and brings their names before the Lord in prayerful petition. Paul is thankful for the fruits of grace that were revealed in the lives of the believers.
Verse 3 can be translated various ways:
NASB: constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ and of our God and Father
NIV: We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
ESV: remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
The similarities in the words used within the verse is very striking: Work, labor, endurance, steadfastness, hope, inspired…it seems to me that Paul had something very important to say, something that isn’t quite captured by the English rendering.
When we break down the different words, we find the following:
Work is the word ergon, and denotes something by which an individual is occupied, something that takes up all their time and energy.
Faith is the word pistis, and carries with it the idea of faith, confidence, conviction, commitment, trust, fidelity, and guarantee. It is derived from peithomai (be persuaded, have confidence, obey).
Labor is kopos, and Paul envisions one who beats his breast with grief and sorrow when he uses this word, a beating of the breast which leads to intense labor.
Love is agape, agape being the highest form of the words used for love in the NT, meaning God’s love, love with deep respect, love according to value, love expressed in good will or deeds, love that manifests itself and puts itself on display; literally demonstration of love.
Steadfastness/endurance is hypomone, meaning endurance, from hypomeno, meaning to endure, to wait expectantly. The connotation is of someone who is not swayed from his purposes by even the most severe trials or sufferings. Those reading this in Paul’s time would envision this endurance as the most potent of all virtues, the vigor and perseverance of an Olympic athlete.
Hope here is elpis, referring to hope inspired by Jesus Christ, a confident, expectant, and joyful hope of salvation. This spiritual hope is contrasted with human hope, which is the uncertain or anguished longing for a desired good.
When we put verse 3 back together, we read Paul’s words in a slightly different light:
remembering all your time and energy occupied by obedient works of commitment, your passionate and intense labor of love that is not merely spoken, but demonstrated, and your confident and expectant hope in Jesus Christ, of which you are certain and for whom you endure all things.
Each of us have something that we chase, something that we desire above all else.
We may not be able to put our finger on it – name it or identify it – but it is there. Haunting us and taunting us, inviting us evermore to long for it and ache for it.
Identity. Purpose. Meaning. Happiness. Popularity. Contentment. Success.
I don’t know what it is, but I do know this: What we desire shapes who we are. What we long for – what it is in life that our heart breaks over not having – defines our very existence.
In the book of Genesis, we find Jacob working for a man named Laban. Jacob falls in love with one of Laban’s daughters, Rachel, and desires to marry her. Laban draws up a contract with Jacob in which Jacob would work for Laban for seven years in return for marrying Rachel.
However, Laban is deceitful, and after the seven years are up, he tricks Jacob, putting Rachel’s sister Leah in the marriage bed instead of Rachel. Jacob awakes the next morning and – realizing he was duped – is so overwhelmed with love for Rachel that he pledges another seven years of work in return for the right to marry Rachel.
In the same way, we desire something. We all are willing to sacrifice – to give of ourselves – to obtain what we desire.
We seek affirmation, emotional security, and love, and often seek it in the un-loveliest of places.
We – if given the chance – will alter our lives in some way to obtain what it is we desire; which always bears some significance on those around us.
So the question is, what we you desire? What are we seeking so feverishly? What is the ends by which we measure all our means?
What we desire will shape who we are; what do we desire?
1 Thessalonians 1:3 can be translated various ways:
NASB: constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ and of our God and Father
NIV: We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
ESV: remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.
What is most striking to me when I read this passage in one translation, and again when I compare several different translations, is the similarity in the words used. Work, labor, endurance, steadfastness, hope, inspired…it seems to me that Paul had something very important to say, something that isn’t quite captured by the English rendering.
When we break down the different words, we find the following:
Work is the word ergon, and denotes something by which an individual is occupied, something that takes up all their time and energy.
Faith is the word pistis, and carries with it the idea of faith, confidence, conviction, commitment, trust, fidelity, and guarantee. It is derived from peithomai (be persuaded, have confidence, obey).
Labor is kopos, and Paul envisions one who beats his breast with grief and sorrow when he uses this word, a beating of the breast which leads to intense labor.
Love is agape, agape being the highest form of the words used for love in the NT, meaning God’s love, love with deep respect, love according to value, love expressed in good will or deeds, love that manifests itself and puts itself on display; literally demonstration of love.
Steadfastness/endurance is hypomone, meaning endurance, from hypomeno, meaning to endure, to wait expectantly. The connotation is of someone who is not swayed from his purposes by even the most severe trials or sufferings. Those reading this in Paul’s time would envision this endurance as the most potent of all virtues, the vigor and perseverance of an Olympic athlete.
Hope here is elpis, referring to hope inspired by Jesus Christ, a confident, expectant, and joyful hope of salvation. This spiritual hope is contrasted with human hope, which is the uncertain or anguished longing for a desired good.
When we dissect Paul’s words, we read 1 Thess 1:3 slightly differently:
remembering all your time and energy occupied by obedient works of commitment, your passionate and intense labor of love that is not merely spoken, but demonstrated, and your confident and expectant hope in Jesus Christ, of which you are certain and for whom you endure all things.
in college (i attended a liberal college and majored in religious studies with a concentration in philosophy) my junior seminar was entitled, “evil and existence;” it was an exposition of evil and the different ways philosophy tries explain it and cope with it.
one of the tantamount questions we dealt with was threefold: how is it that a) God exists, b) God is all powerful and all loving, and c) evil exists. to philosophers of an earthly perspective, such a statement did not make sense to them.
an issue we worked through extensively was that of theodicy – the vindication of divine goodness and providence in view of the existence of evil (Oxford American Dictionary).
we read hannah arendt and her thoughts on the holocaust, paul ricoeur and his ways to summarize evil, the horrific death by a thousand cuts, and other explanations of and traumatizing expeditions into the existence of evil.
and yet, none seemed to do justice for me; none seemed to explain the situation completely.
obviously, as a follower of Jesus Christ i see things from a different perspective and my worldview is built on a completely different set of presuppositions.
and so, as i realized the emptiness an earthly and fallen philosophy offered regarding evil, i began to see just how big my God truly is. recognizing the inadequacy of fickle, fallen, foolish, finite human reasoning, i began to worship God.
God’s plan is ultimate and perfect, His glory is transcendent above all else, and His purposes are without flaw. He orchestrates and allows all that happens despite the fact that over 6 billion people won’t understand it.
now i will admit that in recent days it has been increasingly difficult for me to rest easily and trust my God; it seems that every day another school shooting, mass murder, tragedy, or unthinkable horror occurs. Walt Mueller deals with some of these situations in a very poignant and redemptive fashion: http://learningmylines.blogspot.com
my father-in-law is a retired crime scene investigator (the show CSI is a sham, by the way), and he was actually one of the first people in the school with the SWAT team when Columbine happened to assist in crime scene reconstruction and blood spatter analysis; some of the stories he tells me about what he has experienced are beyond terrifying.
i think sometimes – admittedely very foolishly – begin to doubt God. i doubt His plan, His purpose….that He knows what He is doing….i think i doubt as a child doubts his father’s reasoning when he says, “don’t play in the street, it isnt safe.”
but then i stop and think, and i actually begin to praise my God all the more: it is so beyond my comprehension that He works all things for His good and His glory. and even though i cant understand it and dont see it, i know He is there, working and present. just because we aren’t aware of His Holy Spirit doesn’t mean He isnt there.
there is a reason soren kierkegaard said, “life is mean to be lived forward and understood backwards.”
there is a reason God is God and i am not.
there is a reason God works in us and through us and around us without our knowing.
it seems paradigmatic but i know it to be true – the more i see evil the more i am driven into the arms of my God because I know He is working for His glory. i have no other rest, no other foundation on which to stand, no other way to explain evil.
in attempting to understand evil, i am brought face to face with the reality of the very foundation for existence.
i desire to be the wise man who built his house on rock by listening to the words of the Lord and implementing them in my life (Matthew 7:24-29). and it is on that foundation that i presuppose my life and my purpose.
so it makes sense that as i turn to evil and attempt to comprehend it, i would see that my only recourse is to retreat to that very same foundation that trusts God and sees Him in and through everything.
i know my God in truth, though i will never know Him in fullness and entirety.
and in that same vein, i will understand the truth that God is always working for His own glory, and such a statement will explain every circumstance facing our world – even evil – though i will never comprehend the fullness or entirety of why or how.
8“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD.
9“For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways
And My thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55: 8-9
29 The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law.
Deuteronomy 29:29
to God be the glory, forever and ever amen.
